Something Else
by Bonsoir
Summary: FE13. Love had been replaced by something else.


**Title:** Something Else  
**Characters:** Frederick/Cordelia  
**Genre:** Romance  
**Words:** 969  
**Notes:** Takes place in the future that the kids come from. 2/10 for the OTP Meme.  
**Prompt:** #01: Holding Hands

* * *

_Nothing in this world compares to the comfort and security of having someone just hold your hand.  
_-Richelle E. Goodrich

* * *

Love had no place on the battlefield; Frederick had learned that long ago, and it had cost him the full use of his left leg.

Severa was safe at home—lonely, perhaps, and anxious for her mother, but safe…for now, which was the only kind of safety offered in their godforsaken world.

Love had been replaced by something else.

Cordelia was with him. They were going to battle again; they were always at war. Chrom was dead—for Chrom was all he was, now, just a name and a body turning slowly to dust. Frederick had failed to protect him, and so had Cordelia. They blamed themselves but never grieved together.

Everything they did was separate—dream, think, sleep—though they were married.

Cordelia was facing away from him on her side. They shared a tent, and blankets, and lives but there was a wall between them. He supposed it had always been there, erected when he asked her to marry him, and he knew that it would remain standing until one of them finally crumbled.

He reached over to her side—a temporary lowering of the wall—and squeezed her hand. After a long moment, and without saying a word, she squeezed back.

* * *

Despite his own personal wish to die first, Cordelia fell before him. It was an overcast, warm day. He didn't see her die—he only heard her startled cry, and when he turned around, it was too late. He didn't try to save her, didn't try to push her intestines back into the gaping hole in her belly. It was no use. He remembered her belly being round and firm with child.

Severa. She would be inconsolable over her mother's death. "Always fighting for Chrom," she'd said with a sniff, when they had last parted.

"And for you," Cordelia had said, but Severa had missed that part, hadn't heard it at all, with her face pressed into his chest.

When the battle ended, he knelt beside his wife's body. It had been a long time since he had felt love for her. Love was not supposed to be fleeting or fickle like safety; it was solid. It was supposed to last forever.

But it hadn't. She had never felt it for him, and he had lost it somewhere, somehow, between the sounds of a baby crying and Cordelia mumbling with a pillow over her head, "No, not again, I can't _stand_ it," and silent sex with the fight for survival pressing in on all sides.

He slipped her wedding ring from her slack finger and pocketed it.

He left his where it was: so tight on his left hand that he hadn't been able to remove it even for cleaning since Severa's birth.

He didn't let go of her hand; he just studied it for a moment, allowing himself to forget the blood spilling down her front—the gruesome reality. Her hands were calloused and her fingers bonier than he remembered.

She was still beautiful—Severa looked like a miniature version of her mother, and acted it too, so clever and sometimes too brave for her own good. He tried to replay the battle in his mind, just once, to see if he could have done anything to prevent her death, but he couldn't remember anything at all—just the expression on Cordelia's face as she realized what was happening.

She was still grimacing in death.

He squeezed her fingers and remembered when she had taken his hand, saying, "It's time. Frederick, it's time!"

But she didn't squeeze back, this time.

His heart felt heavy as he tossed her into the deep pit they had spent hours digging for their dead, and even though he was certain he no longer loved her, he felt _something_ to see her limp and lifeless, to see her long hair covered with dirt.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over to see Sully standing beside him. He hadn't truly looked at her face in years; she looked old, older than he felt, like she'd already lived one life too many.

"Godsdammit, Frederick," she told him, looking down into the pit. "I'm sorry."

So many people had died that nobody even bothered to try giving heartfelt condolences. They never meant anything to anyone, anyway.

"You've done all right," he replied after a moment.

"Seven years," she said. "Kjelle was just a little thing. She'll be all right. If I don't make it…she's got what it takes. Maybe I've done a lot of things wrong in my life, but I've done damn right by her, I swear it."

He gave her something like a smile. "You'll live to see her again, Sully," he tried to reassure her, but his words were empty and so were her eyes.

"I hope so."

And then she was leading her horse away, and he felt strangely empty.

Sully had never been the best company, but she understood what it was like more than anyone. When Virion had died, it had been a wild blow to the company. She hadn't even cried—she'd just picked up her screaming five-year-old and had borne it all with surprising grace and dignity.

But Frederick wondered if he would do half as well, himself.

* * *

The wall was gone.

Her side of the bed was cold. He felt it beneath his hand—the emptiness. It crept into his fingers and up his left arm.

Severa would cry when he told her.

She tried so hard to be strong, but she was still a child, and she had a loving heart.

He took a deep breath. It was calm, collected.

His hand fisted in the cold sheets as he took another. It wavered precariously like his fingers, and when he loosened his grip, smoothing down the sheets, something broke, shattered, _crumbled_.


End file.
